‘JACK’ GIVES DIRECTOR ROOM FOR CREATIVITY

Unlike with the ‘X-Men’ movies, Singer has the freedom to craft his own story

When Bryan Singer stepped up to direct the first “X-Men” movie, he walked into an established comic book mythology nearly 40 years in the making. As both director and producer, he’s since shepherded the franchise through the tricky territory of pleasing hard-core comics fans and large swaths of moviegoers alike.

Not so with his latest film, “Jack the Giant Slayer,” a classic adventure fairy tale that required just three essential pieces: a boy named Jack, an oversized beanstalk and a giant. Countless versions of the story about a boy who faces off with a fearsome giant after naively acquiring and planting a handful of magical beans have been told across continents and cultures dating back to at least the 12th century. For Singer, this meant the rest of the story was wide open.

“All I knew was I wanted a beanstalk and giants, and the rest would pretty much be an original story that accommodated those icons, so it was nice,” Singer said in a telephone interview.

The story Singer wanted to tell was modeled after the “transportive adventure films” he loved as a kid, such as “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” while also delivering on the promise of a fairy tale. “If I’m telling a classic fairy tale story like a classic adventure film, there really needs to be some delineation between who are my heroes, who are my villains and who am I rooting for,” he said.

As a kindhearted, orphaned farmhand, Nicholas Hoult’s Jack is easily identifiable as the designated underdog hero. Soon after he encounters and falls for the rebellious princess (Eleanor Tomlinson) of his 13th-century English kingdom, the magical beanstalk bursts into the sky, taking the princess along with it. When the royal search party assembles, Jack volunteers to join the dangerous mission to save the girl from the hungry and vengeful giants that live somewhere above the clouds.

Singer was a fan of Hoult’s work in the TV series “Skins” and the film “A Single Man,” and he was instrumental in casting the now-23-year-old actor in “X-Men: First Class.” When it came time to find his Jack, Hoult was the first person who came to mind. “He has a lot of vulnerability and humor, the kind of qualities that make you root for him and make you want him to succeed, have an adventure, conquer giants and get the girl,” Singer explained. “He’s got a charm a lot like a young, British Jimmy Stewart.”

You certainly can’t say the same of the giants in “Jack the Giant Slayer.” Grotesque and ruthless, the massive humanoid creatures are the special-effects centerpiece of Singer’s first foray into performance capture and 3-D filmmaking. Rather than depicting the giants as lumbering and dim, Singer envisioned a new breed. “I wanted these giants to be more cunning, lean, mean and fast. I felt very strongly about that,” he said.

He also wanted them to feel as real as the locations they visited around the English countryside. “They’re designed as if they’re living, breathing creatures, but if you get close to them, what looks like hair or boils actually might look more like grass or rocks, and so they’re something of the earth,” Singer explained. He then relied on the actors he cast as the main giant characters, Bill Nighy, John Kassir and Ben Daniels, to give the creatures personality and plenty of attitude.